Porsche's bonus used to arrive like the seasons. For years it was one of the surest and richest payouts in German carmaking. In 2024 it topped $10,000. This year German staff got nothing. At meetings this summer, new chief executive Michael Leiters told employees the payouts “weren't a given,” the Journal's Stephen Wilmot reports. They depend on profit coming back, and everyone owns a piece of that.
Porsche has had two brutal years. Sales collapsed in China. President Trump's tariffs hit. The company bet early on electric cars and bet wrong. Net income last year came in under half a billion dollars, down from $5.6 billion in 2023. The Journal's chart shows deliveries down in every region in the first nine months of 2026, with China falling the most. Parent Volkswagen said on Monday, Oct. 12, that its group deliveries fell 14% in the third quarter, and 39% in China.
Nobody can hide
Leiters joined in January after more than a decade at McLaren and Ferrari (RACE). He'd spent almost 15 years at Porsche before leaving in 2014. His plan has a German name, Sportwagenschmiede '35, roughly sports-car workshop '35. In July a union deal more than doubled planned job losses to about 9,000 by 2035, about a fifth of the workforce. Work-from-home days fell to eight a month from 12. Future bonuses get paid partly in stock, and top managers' bonuses now weigh individual work more heavily. “We wanted to show that nobody can hide behind the whole organization,” Leiters said. He also wants the company small enough to break even on sales as low as 200,000 cars.
The other half of the plan is pricier cars. On Thursday in New York, Leiters and new chief designer Tobias Sühlmann showed an early prototype of a low, long car meant for buyers above the 911. A three-row SUV priced above the Cayenne is coming, though not before 2029. Special editions can run to $15 million. The goal is to lift the average price of the 10,000 most expensive Porsches sold each year to about $370,000 from $300,000. That's the Ferrari playbook. Analysts like it but warn it takes time. Oxcap's Stuart Pearson says product-planning mistakes don't get fixed quickly.
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This is a Career story, and a compensation story. Porsche's workers learned the lesson in one year. A bonus that always came became a bonus that depends on a profit recovery, a personal review and the share price. That's the direction a lot of companies are heading, well beyond Stuttgart. Stock-based pay sounds like a gift. It also stacks your paycheck, your bonus and your savings on the same company. If the company has a bad year, all three take the hit together. On the car side, the lesson is simpler. A $370,000 Porsche is consumption. Enjoy it if you can afford it, and don't call it an asset.
Here's the connection to your own paycheck. If any part of your pay is a bonus, your budget shouldn't spend it before it lands. Porsche's people got more than $10,000 in 2024 and zero this year. This week, make two checks. First, look at your emergency fund and ask whether it covers a year with no bonus at all. Second, add up the company stock you hold, in the retirement plan, the purchase program and the unvested grants, and see what share of your net worth it is. If that share makes you wince, a selling schedule for vested shares is the fix. The umbrella goes by the door in September, while the sky is still clear.